President Barack Obama's administration is keeping New Delhi "fully informed" as it shapes its strategy for dealing with the terrorist threat emanating from Pakistan, a senior U.S. official told lawmakers on Tuesday. Richard C. Holbrooke, special envoy on Pakistan and Afghanistan, also acknowledged that the deployment of 21,000 additional U.S. troops in Afghanistan could further destabilise Pakistan by forcing militants east.

The top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and author of legislation that established a programme to provide US expertise to help safeguard and dismantle stockpiles of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons wants to expand this programme to include Pakistan.

President Barack Obama's administration appears to have made little headway in persuading the Pakistani government about the urgency to shift focus away from a perceived threat from India toward a more real problem of the Taliban.

President Barack Obama’s administration is seeking Saudi Arabia’s help to unite Pakistan's political leaders against what it sees as a mortal threat posed by the Taliban. Before President Asif Ali Zardari's meetings at the White House, a US official clarified that Washington is not ditching Zardari in favour of opposition leader Nawaz Sharif.

US President Barack Obama met Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari and Afghan President Hamid Karzai at the White House on Wednesday and urged them to jointly tackle the threat posed by the Taliban in their countries. Neither Zardari nor Karzai are seen likely to be able to deliver on American requests, but the Obama administration is aware of its limited options in the region.

As per the official transcript of President Barack Obama’s prime-time press conference sent out by the “Office of the Press Secretary” at the White House, Mr. Obama told reporters on the evening of April 29: “I am gravely concerned about the situation in Pakistan not because I think that they’re immediately going to be overrun and the Taliban would take over in Pakistan; more concerned that the civilian government there right now is very fragile and doesn’t seem to have the capacity to deliver basic services — schools, health care, rule of law, a judicial system that works for the majority of people. And so as a consequence it is very difficult for them to gain the support and loyalty of their people.”

The recession has put the brakes on the number of foreign workers flocking to the US in pursuit of the fabled American dream. A month since it started accepting applications, the US Citizenship and Immigration Services has received approximately 45,000 H-1B visa petitions, far less than the congressionally-mandated 65,000 cap.

Although clearly committed to combating extremism, the Indian government's counterterrorism efforts remain "hampered by its outdated and overburdened law enforcement and legal systems," says a State Department report.